


the aftermath

by oddlyqueer



Category: Frankenstein & Related Fandoms, Frankenstein - Mary Shelley, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bad Decisions, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, FTM Victor Frankenstein, Father Figures, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Mild Gore, Surgery, Trans Male Character, Trans Victor Frankenstein, and jekyll helps him out, it does not go well, top surgery, victor tries to do surgery on himself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 19:18:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20069209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddlyqueer/pseuds/oddlyqueer
Summary: Through the fog of pain that clouded his vision and the horrific smell that made him unable to breathe, Victor vaguely registered that there was someone in his room. He could barely see, so he had no idea who it was, but he knew they seemed upset from their voice.“What did you do to yourself?”





	the aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> tw for lots of blood and gore, reference to dysphoria, and surgery/medical horror
> 
> the aftermath of a fic written by the lovely @Diabeticbeauty

Victor had been sitting in his room, curled up in the fetal position with his hands pressed to his stomach to stave off the nausea, for at least a full day. He was certain that Jekyll, the man who had decided to take him as a protegé, would be awfully upset with him for skipping the time they had set apart for him to study. Unfortunately, Victor had been focusing very hard on not vomiting, and he could not do anything else besides lay in bed and sob. His lungs felt like they were on fire.

He didn't know whether this was a hallucination or not, but he fancied that the door to his room had just swung open, and cool air flowed into the room. Victor breathed a sigh of relief from the feeling of cold on his skin; he almost sobbed from the relief of it all. His head was pounding.

Through the fog of pain that clouded his vision and the horrific smell that made him unable to breathe, Victor vaguely registered that there was someone in his room. He could barely see, so he had no idea who it was, but he knew they seemed upset from their voice.

“What did you do to yourself?”

Victor winced. He did not want his mentor walking in on him in this state. What would he think of him now? If he saw what Victor had done, if he saw  _ why _ Victor had done it, there would be hell to pay. He pulled his arms in as close as he could to himself, trying to hide his chest, but it was incredibly painful; he choked down a sob as he moved. Jekyll pulled his arms away and softly ran a hand over Victor’s sweat-soaked forehead, brushing away the loose strands of hair that had stuck there.

As Victor coughed and choked, trying to speak, Jekyll soothed him, gently running his hand over Victor’s hair, which had been drenched in sweat and blood. 

“Shh, it’s alright. Come, I’ll treat those cuts.” 

Victor wondered vaguely how Jekyll knew that there were wounds on his body, but that realization quickly came upon him when he looked down at himself. The shirt he wore was soaked through with blood in two round lines that had spread into large spots. He almost gagged when he saw them—it was disgusting, and had most certainly soaked through to his sheets as well. 

He felt a hand on his side. He recoiled in pain, and barely managed to choke back the inhuman cry of pain that bubbled up inside him. The agony that coursed through his body was too much to bear. Instead of being afraid, though, Jekyll merely took his hand away and helped Victor sit up. Another wave of pain seared through him, but he did not scream; he just dug his nails into his thighs to release some of the tension. Jekyll pulled his hands away gently. He wrapped his arm around Victor and pulled him up to a standing position, but when he tried to walk, the pain blinded him, and he almost fell. 

Jekyll pulled Victor up into his arms without missing a beat. Ordinarily, Victor would have protested this, but he was in no condition to even talk, much less stand on his own, so he just wrapped his arms around Jekyll’s neck as best he could and let Jekyll carry him downstairs to the lab.

The realization of what treating his wounds would entail struck Victor only as Jekyll put him down on the lab table. Seemingly, the mental haze the opiates had given him had long since worn off, and he could now think somewhat clearly, though blinding flashes of pain came through every time he moved his upper body.

As Jekyll undid the buttons of his shirt, Victor was unable to resist. How could he? There would be no way for him to fight it without incredible pain.

Jekyll gasped once the shirt was open. “Oh God, Victor, what have you done?” 

Victor could not speak. He could only close his eyes against the tears that dripped down his face, hoping to stave off the crying for a little while longer at the very least. Jekyll sighed and shook his head, going to the medical cabinet and picking up the gauze, sutures, and a flask of clean water. He returned in a few moments, looking down at Victor with pity in his eyes. If he had been in any state to protest, he would have; Victor Frankenstein was not someone to be pitied. However, the pain was awful and agonizing, and he could not speak yet, could only hope the sobs that were beginning to rack his body would not affect the plans Jekyll had to dress and clean his wounds. 

Jekyll picked up some sort of salve and ran his hand gently along the wounds, barely touching him. “It’s a numbing solution,” he explained as he did. “This will help with the pain.”

Victor nodded and waited as Jekyll adjusted his posture, helping him sit up straighter. The pain in his chest had dulled to a gentler ache, less than it had been before. He took a deep breath in and got ready for the pain that was sure to come from the first stitch, but— 

Nothing. No pain at all. The numbing salve was incredibly helpful—it completely soothed the pain, and he barely felt the needle enter his skin. 

"There's some tissue missing here," Jekyll said, gently touching his chest. "Were you trying to remove it?"

Victor nodded slowly, choking back tears. He bit his lip hard enough to break the skin, dreading what Jekyll would say. What if he hit him? What if he forced him to leave? What if— 

"Here, I'll finish it for you," Jekyll said quietly, going to the chemical cabinet and taking out an anesthetic. He returned to the medicine table and poured a small amount into a syringe, gently tapping it to push out the oxygen. "This should get you to sleep." 

Victor tried to thank him, but he could not get his voice to work. He just closed his eyes and let his mind slip off into darkness.

When he woke up, he felt strangely lightheaded. The only thing he saw was the crossbeam that stretched across the ceiling of Jekyll’s lab, and the stone walls of the basement laboratory in which he lay. He looked down at his chest and saw bandages twined around himself, and more importantly, a flatness to his chest that had certainly not been there before.

Jekyll heard him sit up, and walked over to the impromptu operating table; it was just a table from his lab draped in a clean white cloth. 

"Shh. It's alright. Lay back down, okay?" 

"What?" Victor rasped, his voice hoarse and sore. "You… you did the rest of the surgery?"

"Of course," he said, running his hand over Victor's chest with one hand. His hand gently pressed into it, not hard enough to be really painful, but enough to give him a sense of whether or not it was painful. It felt alright, somewhat harsh but still gentle. It felt rather nice, actually; his muscles were incredibly sore after the tension that had ripped through them the previous night. "How did that feel? Is there any pain?"

"Um… I don't feel any there…" Victor said softly. He winced as Jekyll's thumb pressed into one of the scars slightly harder, pulling back. 

"Ah. So there's still some pain." He helped him sit up and guided him into an oversized shirt, one that must have originally belonged to that man which often came over to spend the night with Jekyll. It did not cling to his body, so it was easy to move in and would leave room for bandages and gauze over his chest. His body was still burning in pain, but he felt much better than he had the day before. 

As he walked to the door, bare feet padding across the cold stone floors of the lab, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and flinched. 

His body was still coated in blood. It was matted into his hair, spattered onto his face, neck, and hands, dried under his fingernails, staining his body completely. There was a crazed, disturbing look in his eyes, which made him look desperate and scared, like a caged animal. This, combined with the blood which was splattered across his body, made him look like he was half-dead.

Even the parts of him that were not bloody were wrong. His face was so hollow and thin—he must not have eaten in a few days, as he looked almost like he was dead. The dark circles under his eyes had faded, leaving him pale and skeletal, and his feminine features were incredibly prominent; his Adam's apple was nonexistent, his lips were large and soft, and his eyes were wide and framed by long, dark eyelashes. 

Jekyll noticed him staring at his face in the mirror on the door. “You don’t look like yourself,” he said quietly, tidying up the workstation. He had evidently disposed of any remaining viscera before Victor awoke; the scalpel and metal basin were both gleaming clean and the table was spotless. The only hint that any surgery had even occurred were the tools actually present. Victor noticed all of this with gratitude. He could barely stand the sight of blood after what he’d done to himself before. It made him feel violently ill. 

“If you need the assistance, I can help you bathe,” Jekyll said. “Only if it is appropriate, of course. I wouldn’t want to overstep.”

“Oh. Um, I do think I need it. The assistance with bathing, I mean. I can barely move my arms without pain.”

“I suspected as much,” Jekyll said, and held out his arm to help Victor walk. He gratefully looped his arm through Jekyll’s, leaning on it heavily as they walked up the laboratory stairs and towards the bathroom. The stairs gave him the most trouble; his muscles were very sore and still half-asleep. Jekyll rang for one of the staff as soon as they arrived, and asked them to draw a bath. 

Apparently while Victor was still under the anesthetic, he had asked them to prepare food, and a fresh batch of bread had been made alongside some roast chicken and a pot of tea. While waiting on the bath, Victor ate as if he hadn’t in days—which, he realized with a sudden twinge of worry, he most certainly had not.

Finally, when a maid arrived to tell them the bath was ready, Victor followed Jekyll back towards the bathroom and began to undo the buttons of the shirt, trying not to hurt himself too much in the process. Jekyll stopped him halfway through, undoing the buttons for him and starting to remove the sterile, clean strips of cloth that he’d wrapped around his chest. 

All of a sudden, Victor felt a jolt of fear run down his back, as if ice had formed around his spine. What if it was rotting? Or if it was just as bad as before, or somehow worse? The fear gripped him until he was finally free of the bandages, the strips of gauze had been removed, and he had turned around to look in the small mirror hanging up on the wall. 

As soon as he did, tears sprang to his eyes. There were two long, reddish scars that curved along his chest, he had expected that much, but what he had not expected was how little it affected the overall appearance. It looked as male as he could possibly have expected. 

Jekyll noticed as he began to cry. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m—” Victor wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I just didn’t realize how… right it would look.”

He smiled at Victor with startling sincerity. Something in Jekyll’s face made Victor think that this wasn’t the first time he’d seen someone go through this. Though he was curious, he was much too taken with the new appearance of his body to ask any questions. It was also incredibly personal to ask someone about that sort of thing; he certainly wouldn’t want to be asked about it. All of this combined, he didn’t press it. 

Bathing was incredibly awkward when one was still wearing one’s drawers, and the awkwardness was only further exacerbated because he couldn’t actually clean the suture lines himself, so he had to rely entirely on Jekyll’s help. Embarrassment was the only real emotion he could feel. Even the elation of his new body was fading in exchange for the humiliation of this.

Finally, they managed to get him dressed again, and he ignored the flush of his face, trying to pretend this wasn’t happening. 

“You should go back to your room and get some rest,” Jekyll said, smoothing Victor’s hair. It was still wet, since they’d had to wash the blood out of it. 

“You’re right,” Victor said, wiping his face off with the towel that Jekyll had given him. “I’m completely exhausted now.”

“It’s most likely from the anesthesia,” Jekyll said, taking his arm yet again to help him back down the stairs to the bedrooms. As Victor made his way back to his chambers, he stopped himself; it would still carry the stench of gore that he had not yet cleaned up. Jekyll approached him and put a hand on his shoulder. 

“I’ll take care of your room,” he said. “Go stay in mine until I come find you.”

Victor smiled gratefully up at him and proceeded to Jekyll’s room. The journey took quite a while, as the house was large and the room he had been given was down in the basement with the lab. Jekyll’s room was at the top of the house, on the third floor, and besides the unfortunate position of their rooms on opposite sides of the house, Victor was still in no shape to walk quickly. By his estimate, the journey to Jekyll’s chambers took him nearly half an hour. Stairs were the worst of it.

The room was sparsely furnished, though the bed, nightstand, vanity, and accompanying chair were well-made and expensive-looking. A towering stack of books stood on the nightstand, looking as though it was about to fall over at any moment. Both sides of the large four-poster bed were recently slept in. Victor sat down in the only chair, which was at the vanity, looking over the various toiletries—the usual things, as well as a small bottle of rose oil and several ribbons that were evidently used to tie back Jekyll’s hair.

“Trying to examine my habitat as you would one of your specimens?”

Victor turned around to see Jekyll standing in the doorway and went red. “I was just—”

“No, no, it’s quite alright. Don’t worry.” He stood beside the vanity, leaning on it, and looked over at Victor with an unreadable expression on his face. 

“What is it, sir?”

“Oh, no formalities, please. We’re quite past that now.” 

Victor could only nod. He knew it was true. “Very well. I still want to know what’s on your mind, though.”

“You’re a smart man, Victor,” Jekyll said, standing up and pacing around the room. “One of the smartest men I know, in fact. You’re an expert in human biology, anatomy, and chemistry, even though you are only eighteen. Is all of this true?”

Victor nodded again. No sense in denying it—after all, Jekyll would not have taken him on as a protegé if he had not been as qualified as he was.

“Why, then, would you be so stupid as to attempt a surgery on yourself? And one so close to your vital organs, too. You could have  _ died _ , Victor. Would you have wanted that? To kill yourself in the name of—I don’t even know what?”

“I was aware of the risks, but—”

“Were you? Were you aware of it? You evidently could not have been, or you wouldn’t have tried to do a simple surgery  _ on yourself _ that could have resulted in you puncturing a lung or—”

“It would have been worth it,” Victor hissed, his nails once again digging into his skin. “I would have taken death any day rather than what I had to live through.”

At this, Jekyll stopped dead in his pacing, his back turned to Victor. He could instantly tell that he’d crossed a line—of course he had. Jekyll was his  _ teacher _ . He was not a confidant, not a father, not a friend. He should have kept it all to himself. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have—”

“Don’t apologize,” Jekyll said, holding up a hand to silence him. He still did not turn around. “It is I who should be apologizing to you. I did not realize the extent to which you were suffering due to your... problem. At least I did not misunderstand it before I completed the surgery, or else I might not have actually gone through with it and finished the procedure for you.” 

He finally turned around, and Victor caught a glimpse of tears shining in his eyes. 

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“You would have been fine with death? If you had made too drastic of a mistake with your surgery. You would have accepted it?”

“Like I said. Death would be preferable to suffering through what I had to.” 

“How much do the suture areas hurt still?” Jekyll asked suddenly. 

“Um—not very much.”

Jekyll immediately took him into his arms, enveloping him in a tight hug. This so shocked Victor that he nearly fell over, but as he grew more comfortable, he relaxed into it as well. 

Finally, breaking away from the embrace, Victor looked up at his mentor, confused. 

“Why did you…” Victor trailed off, unsure of how to continue. 

“Because you have become much more to me than simply someone studying under me,” he said, placing his hands gently on Victor’s shoulders. “You are almost a son to me, Victor. It would be awful to see you hurt in any way, and I am desperate to help you in whatever manner I can.”

“I don’t understand,” Victor said, his voice childish and scared. “Why are you being so—so  _ kind _ to me?”

“There’s no reason not to be,” Jekyll said simply. “You are someone of great importance to me. Will you allow me to help you, like I want to?”

Victor hesitated for a moment. His head hurt quite a bit, and thinking was not easy anymore. He was trying hard to actually respond to the question. “I suppose I have no choice. I’ve already indebted myself to you enough, I can’t exactly stop you anymore. And I do need the help, to be perfectly honest.” 

The look of pure happiness on Jekyll’s face lifted even Victor’s low spirits.

“Thank you, Victor,” he said. Victor was suddenly aware that he had been using his name much more often recently, as if he had noticed the state that he’d been in as of late. It was a strangely comforting gesture, and one that he greatly appreciated, though it was barely noticeable. 

“Why are you thanking me?”

“Because you’ve come so far,” he said with a fatherly smile. “When you were first put under my teaching, you never even spoke to me. You hid behind glares and silence, and tried very hard to avoid me. But as soon as you told me to call you Victor, you changed. You were happy, you actually spoke, and you genuinely seem to share your emotions with me. I feel incredibly honored that you chose to share this with me, and that you feel comfortable enough with me to tell me this.”

Victor went red. He had obviously not been expecting this. “Thank you,” he said, his voice hoarse with embarrassment. His accent slipped out somewhat, coloring his English a bit as it always did when he was nervous. In spite of himself, a smile spread across his face.

“Oh, Victor, you don’t need to thank me,” he said. The happiness in his voice was obvious. “Now,” he said, taking Victor’s arm once again and beginning to lead him back to the door. “Let’s see if we can’t get you back to bed. Recovering from surgery is incredibly strenuous, you know.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!!! wow this was a ride lmao. 
> 
> as always, comments and kudos are wonderfully appreciated!


End file.
